>> 1 Nov 2004

A TANGLED WEB IS MOVING.No posts today folks - 'cos we're packing up our bags and moving.After 1o months of ATW on blogger, we've gone and got ourselves a new home. Blogger has been generally fun but also problematic. The server is frequently down which is really frustrating when we're looking to post stories and the capabilities limited. So it's bye bye to ATW on Blogger - and HELLO to ATW on our new typepad platform. Just click HERE and you will be taken to our new site.

It's still a work in progress - so stick with it as lots of new features are added!Finally, and I know this is repetitive, but October saw us record new levels of visitors to the site - so thanks once more to one and all. ATW weblog went live on January 1st 2004 (having previously been atw.co.uk) It's amazing how time has flown in since then, and how many subjects we've covered. Each day the sun comes up - there are fresh topics to engage with, to challenge, maybe even to provoke...a little. So come on over to our new place - we're keen to welcome you!!!

Premature MultiplicationWhen Bobby Darin sang his 1962 song, 'Multiplication' - a tuneful ditty about progeny, I'm sure he didn't imagine children, who were until recently still convinced about the existence of Santa Claus, participating in sexual acts. Today, 42 years on, we live in a society where the amount of unwanted teenage pregnancies coupled with ever-more premature sexual experimentations is nothing other than abhorrent.On Friday, I read the story about two Blackpool sisters - one 14 and one 15 - who were literally in a race to conceive a child. When the younger of the two became the first 'success story', it generated fits of depression in her elder sibling. As usual, the parents were Fred and Wilma Flintstone look-alikes with adipose midriffs, copious amounts of jewellery, the inability to string two words together and probably possessing IQ's of the same numerics as Toulouse-Lautrec's inside leg measurements. When interviewed for a news article, the mother looked balefully at the camera, saying: 'Well, what can ya do?' A response which caused me to yell at the television:'What about a bloody good hiding, for starters?'Human beings have had the same urges at the same ages since the dawn of time. That's only natural. What is different about modern times is the persistently irksome stance taken by the liberal elite that somehow underaged teen sexual habits are something to be contained or encouraged safely, rather than opposed with far tougher penalties. Consequently, we have to read about acts of stupidity such as this, with guaranteed outcomes of more misery for the sexually obsessed numbskulls involved. I appreciate the stance of the Scottish Catholic Church on this matter. I suspect it would be too much to ask for similar condemnation from Anglican liberals.

According the to Provisional IRA's favourite Sunday read, Fianna Fail (Sinn Fein/IRA without the weapons) is set to allow membership for people resident in Northern Ireland. It could set the scene for the foray of Southern nationalism into British politics - either through a Faustian pact with the SDLP, or as a supplanting party structure.

If precedent is anything to go by, I shouldn't be all that concerned. Look at how the secondment regulations for Southern participation in the PSNI were hailed as an advancement towards the jaundiced Utopia of all-Ireland interlocking institutional structures. To-date, 24 citizens from the Republic serve in a force of 7,000 strong. Hardly ground-breaking is it?

Northern nationalists have decided to choose murderers and fascists for their political representatives. I honestly cannot see how the encroachment of Bertie's disciples will seriously affect the situation. A party operating within the boundaries of the United Kingdom will gradually becomes accustomed to British-oriented politics unless, of course, Fianna Fail chooses to leech the Queen's shilling whilst boycotting Westminster. In that case, the Mother of Parliaments would be spared the putrescence of both strands of Irish nationalism. Ah bliss!!!

However, there was one sentence in the article which triggered severe annoyance on my part. It was a suggestion from some Fianna Fail nobody about the temporary existence of Northern Ireland!! '"If Northern Ireland is a transitional arrangement, then the SDLP must be a transitional party," said one party member this weekend." ' What is it with idiots like this? Did the Irish so enjoy their last civil war that they wish to engender the conditions for a fresh one!? If 'The Republican Party' is going to stick its hooter in Ulster's politics with views like the above, it's preparing its membership for possibly more trouble than they can handle.

The Times has a good article hereon just how corrupt Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, is. Apparently he has a cool One Billion dollars salted away for his modest retirement. It is the fate of this loot which prompted his wife to swiftly return from Paris to visit her ailing husband. It's just like Love Story isn't it - and weren't the BBC journalists covering the tale touched by it all?

The Taliban scumbags that kidnapped Annetta Flanigan, along with two other UN workers in Kabul last week, have released a videoon Al Jazeera TV (the terrorists broadcaster of choice) demanding the usual Jihadi nonsense (release all terrorists, empty Guantanamo Bay, etc). This should be treated with contempt.

All around the world the Jihadi i have all cottoned on to the propaganda value of these video's. They saw the UK media become hysterical over the Bigley videos', and they reckon that the release of a well scripted hostage video has now become war by other means. That is why I believe this video's should NOT be given the sort of wall to wall coverage that is afforded them - until that happens more unfortunate people (EVEN those with Irish passports) will be seen as high value hostage material. Margaret Hassan and Annetta Flanigan are paying the price for the liberal media's crusade against Bush.

"When the Islamists behead a tearful Englishman or American, it is more likely that his surviving dad or sibling back home will be on television all over the Middle East within minutes damning Tony Blair or George Bush, without a word of censure for the Dark-Age head-loppers. After all, we are not Nepalese who storm the local mosque and put the fear of God into Islamists when they butcher our own. We are more likely to be frightened, turn on ourselves, and condemn some American somewhere who cannot stop "this."

But cannot our self-induced forbearance vanish as soon as we decide enough is enough? Should the American government ignore the EU hysteria, tell Kofi Annan to worry about his son's crooked shenanigans and not Americans' killing terrorists, and simply take Fallujah — as part of a larger effort to correct the laxity of the past and finish the war — then we would surely win. The fallout would be as salutary as our present restraint is disastrous. Like the murderous Pakistani madrassa zealots who flocked to Tora Bora only to be incinerated, Fallujah would not stand as a mecca for the jihadists, but an Armageddon better to watch on television than die in. "

I liked Denis Boyle'stake on the old "Why Europeans don't like Bush" argument.

He suggests that "there is a shiny obverse, which is "Why Americans care less and less."

The commonplace observation is that the end of the Cold War means that the Europeans no longer have to rely on the U.S. for protection, so they can be as self-serving and duplicitous as they wish. But what Americans seem to finally be understanding is that what the end of the Cold War really means is that the U.S. no longer has to give a damn about a European "alliance" at all — especially one dominated by French and Germans. The solution to rampant, hysterical, angry anti-Americanism is cold, practical, systematic anti-Europeanism.

Let the European taxpayers pay for the obese bureaucracy of the EU and a military establishment to go with it. Let's charge them double for DVDs and make them wear native costumes. We can go take pictures of them in their quaint poorhouses. Demographically, economically, intellectually, scientifically, and politically, the EU is a dead-end, a goner before two more cicada cycles in Pennsylvania. The persistent cynicism, corruption, and economic stagnation of the eurozone is only the tip of that particular iceberg. The real crunch will come in a decade or two when pension systems begin to collapse and European nations have to save themselves by importing millions of Islamic immigrants. That process cannot be stopped, unless every European is seized with a sudden and urgent need to reproduce like bunnies."

Amen to that Denis - I fully endorse it. Let them choke on their Euros.